Food Galore @ New Lane, Penang

I was already in ‘lau-nuah’ ( salivating) mode when we were on the Penang bridge heading towards Penang from the mainland. Of course I was looking forward to meeting EL as well lah ! The last time we met was probably 2 years ago.

Back when we just started work, every week or every other week , WF, EL, PW and myself will have buffet lunches at the hotels along the Batu Ferringi stretch, we will eat and eat and eat until we get our money’s worth, which usually meant that we will eat our system just couldn’t accept another morsel. After meals, back in the car, our over-filled belly close to bursting, we will be competing to name the food that is most filling and ‘jelak’ – most memorable one was probably ‘maggi mee left in soup for 2 hours and have tripled in size ‘ Euukkkkkk…

Anyway, back to my salivating mode…it was decided that we go to New Lane and don’t stop ordering until the table is full of food- I don’t think we have learn anything from the buffet experience. The traffic heading towards New Lane was slightly congested and parking would seemed atrocious, until EL pointed out there is a parking area close by a temple ( opposite Sunway Hotel). Pheww..

There were so many stalls at New Lane, what to order, from which stall ? Wa em chai ai chiark sa mik, wa ai chiak kar liao !! ( I dunno what to eat, I want to eat them all)

I had Char koay Teow, EL’s friend J, recommended the stall beside the Wan Than Mee stall . Apart from the usual ingredients, there were some crab meat sprinkled on the CKT. The dish wasn’t too oily , smooth koy teow, succulent prawns..ah….nice. I checked Wikipedia for the origin of CKT and guess what I found ? ‘ when the dish was first invented, it was mainly served to labourers high fat content and low cost of the dish made it attractive to these people as it was a cheap source of energy and nutrients . When the dish was first served, it was often sold by fisheman, farmers and cockle-gatherers who doubled as char kway teow sellers in the evening to supplement their income’

EL ordered ‘fried kuih kark’ – not bad, EL comment was ‘bo kau thiam’ – my Hokkien had somewhat deteriorated after my migration to KL , what she meant was – not well mixed, some pieces did not come into contact with the sauces.

One outstanding / not to be missed food if you are at New Lane would be the pork intestine porridge. There 2 versions of the intestine : deep fried or boiled. We ordered the deep fried version. The intestine was crispy and tasty, for those that feels a bit uncomfortable with pork intestine, you shouldn’t be, there’s no ‘intestinal’-taste at all, the porridge was smooth and cooked to an almost uniform paste texture. Highly recommended.

This is the stall, when the taukeh saw me pointing the camera at the stall, he said to the helper ( unusually loud so that i could hear) – ‘later you collect RM3 from her, if she ask us to smile, we will charge RM5′ . The white/creamy frilly stuff you see hanging are the boiled intestine an the deep fried ones are to the left.

J ordered laksa- which she said commented was pretty good, they looked good too…

When we were walking from the car park to our makan place, we passed a shop selling chicken feet, that must have left a deep impression on PW, as after ordering the porridge, she braved the hustle and bustle of New Lane and walked 10 minutes to and back to tarpau the chicken feet. The lure of food, I mean feet…anyway, it was well worth the walk !! ( especially when i didn’t have to the walking :D)

As you bite into the soft stewed chicken feet, you taste mushroom..hhmmm…feel the soft tendons giving way, the soft juicy skin falling off the bone..yumyummm..

We also ordered popiah, which was ok lah.

We didn’t fill the table..but…decide to move to another venue and continue our dinner…